I'm a sinner, no better than any other human being. I have no personal bragging rights. My only boast is that, in spite of my many sins and my numerous faults, through God's grace, given in Jesus Christ, my sins are forgiven and I have a new life.

Friday, June 10, 2011

One simple way of increasing your creativity is to use the law of opposites...When you come up with an idea of what to write, of how to play a character, or of what to paint on that canvas… STOP… and ask yourself what is the opposite of that idea, now create something about that.

In the spirit of Geoff's blog, in which all posts are seven sentences long, and his suggestion on how to be creative, here are seven guaranteed ways toward not being creative:

Tell yourself, "It's never been done that way before."

Tell yourself, "It can't be done."

Never plan.

Never ask questions.

Never talk with people who are smarter or wiser than you.

Never ask for help.

Never pray.

If this seems like a good plan of action to you, seek immediate medical help. You may have died and not been informed.

You were created in the image of God and God is the Creator. We're all meant to create things, whatever our jobs or stations in life. Be human...create!

Thursday, June 09, 2011

Tonight, during my fast walk workout, I read chapter 6 of David Platt's extraordinary, Radical. There, Platt challenges American Christians to consider what God might be asking us to give up in order to provide for the needs of "the least of these," including the 26,000 children who die of starvation in the world each day. I find what Platt writes disturbing and exhilarating!

First Platt. Then Sjogren. God is clearly using His subtle sledgehammer to get a message through to me: His grace comes to those who trust in Jesus Christ. But if we trust in Christ, we will obey God, even when the things God seems to tell us to do don't make sense.

Rare is the person who can handle success, prominence, or fame. Fame often leads to a sense of entitlement and invincibility. Fame isn't good for a person's soul.

These lessons have been made clear as I, along with the folks of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church, as part of our Read the Bible in a Year project, have been recently reading about Israel's first king, Saul, in 1 Samuel.

Saul was, by turns, diligent in his duties one moment and arrogant in the abuse of power the next.

Saul never seemed to fully understand that, through his anointing as king, he had been made a servant of God and of Israel, not just of himself.

This lack of understanding once led him to quake among the baggage when his people needed him to command them in war. It also led him to disobey God, employing his own faulty judgment instead of depending on God, all in a gambit to win the favor of those he led.

In time, Saul came to view his fame not only as an entitlement, but as an extension of himself and his personal identity. That, in turn, fed a paranoia that--among other things--caused him to seek the murder of his best and most loyal military leader, David, and to treat the members of his own family as chess pieces to be moved around for his purposes.

As I watched an excerpt of the tearful press conference of Representative Anthony Weiner yesterday, I thought of Saul. Maybe if Weiner weren't a six term congressperson from New York, he wouldn't have done the things to which he admitted yesterday. But fame and prominence, even the smallest whiffs of it, can make the most stable and sober of us think that we're "all that."

A sense of entitlement--an idea that whatever might be vices in others really aren't vices in us--can actually come to any of us at any time, even if our name is known to only a handful of people.

Narcissism, total self-interested self-regard, is something with which we are all born and which it's the job of every parent to wean out of their children.

This inborn trait is what the Bible is talking about when it teaches that we are all born in sin, sin being a condition of self-will over against loving consideration of God or others. (By the way, that's why Jesus says the Great Commandment is to love God and love others. And it's because we can't conquer the condition of sin that leads us to do all manner of stupid, hurtful things, that Jesus calls all people to turn from sin--or repent--and believe in, entrust their lives to, Him. Jesus can erase the power of sin over our lives and help us, in this lifetime, to be recovering narcissists, and in eternity, be utterly free to be the people God originally willed us to be.)

So, if you're not famous, be thankful. It can create such false notions of invincibility, power, and entitlement that it can close your conscience to heeding what's right or correctly identifying what's wrong at any moment in your life.

And if, like me, you're just another ordinary member of the human race, I hope that you can be honest enough to say that, even without fame, you've acted like a person of entitlement who treated God and others with contempt, as though they were bit players in the more important production of your life. If you can muster that level of honesty with God and with yourself, you'll be onto something. You'll be close to surrendering to Christ and His better will for your life.

Finally, if you're prone to join the late night talk show comics in laughing at Anthony Weiner, please don't. His actions are admittedly wrong, even childishly so. But what he needs more than our derision is prayer.

So do we all.

That, of course, doesn't mean that the people for whom we pray shouldn't be held accountable, if their actions are illegal or violate the ethics rules of their professions.

But we can pray for Anthony Weiner or any political leader of either party facing similar humiliation in the face of their own revealed bad judgments and hubris. In 1 Timothy, the first century evangelist Paul writes to a young pastor named Timothy:

First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, 2for kings and all who are in high positions...

That's what I try to do for all political leaders on a regular bases. If you're skeptical about including leaders in government in your prayers, consider this: It can't hurt!

And while you're praying for them, you can also thank God that you're not famous.

We see God's openness in other ways. The Bible affirms, for example, that God’s law—His will and His commands for humanity—has always been written on our hearts, giving all of us a strong hint, long before we even hear the Name of Jesus, that there is a God Who made and cares about us.

The Father wouldn’t let this be the end for Jesus, though. The sinless Savior Who offered His perfect life as the perfect sacrifice for our sin could not remain dead. He had to be raised up so that all people would know about their chance to turn to Him (turning away from their sin), entrust their lives to Him, and live with God eternally.

So, in this prayer, Jesus celebrates what He accomplishes for the glory of the Father and for our eternal good.

And then: Jesus discloses a request to the Father.

In verse 5, Jesus asks, “Father, glorify Me in Your own presence with the glory that I had in Your presence before the world existed…”

The glory of God was displayed in Jesus in many ways. It was seen when...

The glory of God was seen in Jesus too, when at the waters of the Jordan River, where He was baptized, and on the Mount of Transfiguration, the Voice from heaven said, "This is My Son; listen to Him!"

And yet the glory of God disclosed in Jesus on all those occasions and others we might name, were mere hints, dim reflections, brief tastes of the glory Jesus once enjoyed as God the Son in the halls of heaven before the creation of this world!

Now, in this prayer, having accomplished all that He had set out to do in taking on human flesh, Jesus asks the Father to give that glory back to Him again.

(It turns out that even those who reject Jesus and will tragically, live with the consequence of their rejection of “the only Son of God” will also, in the end, acknowledge the glory of God seen in Jesus.)

If there is one thing more than any other that Christ’s Church needs today, it’s a renewed sense of the glory of God!

I’ve mentioned before the woman who approached me after worship one Sunday in a former congregation. She was upset with the words of Psalm 111:10: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom...” (The same words appear also in Proverbs 1:7 and 9:10.)

She affected that voice that some people use when trying to show their piety and said, “I don’t think that we should be afraid of God.” Look, Jesus says that we are His friends when we keep or strive to honor His commandments. He promises to stick closer to us than a brother.

But Jesus, God in the flesh, is not our buddy, not our rabbit’s foot, nor our ATM, nor our good luck charm.

He will be there to judge us at the end of history.

Paraphrasing Bill Cosby’s Cliff Huxtable, Jesus brought us into this world and He can take us out.

He is God almighty.

He alone deserves all our allegiance, honor, loyalty, and thankfulness because, through His “amazing grace,” He saves all who trust in Him from sin and its consequence, death.

We must understand that the God disclosed in Jesus Christ is not a salesperson with whom we can negotiate a price, but the Lord of the universe and that to have Him and the eternity only He can give, we must bow, we must surrender to Him.

It's when we understand this that we’ll be on the road to the wisdom that leads to life.

In this prayer in today's Gospel lesson, Jesus, Who laid His glory by for His time on earth, is reclaiming that glory.

This is what Luther was getting at when he said that whenever the devil came knocking at his heart's door with temptations, announcing that he was looking for Martin Luther, Jesus went to the door in his place and said, "Martin Luther used to live here. But now I live here. Now, go away and don't come back any more!"

It was because of Christ living in him, that the first century preacher Paul, before his death, could write to the young pastor Timothy with the same sense of fulfillment and jubilation we see in Jesus’ prayer in our Gospel lesson on the brink of His death.

Listen closely to Paul's words (this is from The Message translation):

I’m about to die, my life an offering on God’s altar. This is the only race worth running. I’ve run hard right to the finish, believed all the way. All that’s left now is the shouting—God’s applause! Depend on it, [God is] an honest judge. He’ll do right not only by me, but by everyone eager for His coming.

In his wonderful book, Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream, Pastor David Platt talks about how many American Christians think that Jesus’ call and command for radical discipleship, including the call to love all the world and to carry the good news of Jesus to all the nations applies to other people, not us.

In taking this attitude, millions of Christians turn a deaf ear to the needs of 4.5 billion people who may die today without ever hearing the Good News of new life through faith in Jesus Christ.

And in thinking that Jesus’ call only applies to some spiritual elites, we also deny ourselves the very sense of fulfillment and the enjoyment of God’s glory that Jesus exults in in today’s Gospel lesson and that He wants us to have!

We, each of us, need to consider how we can restructure our personal lives to fulfill the mission Christ has given to each of us, so that we too can exult in the sense of fulfillment from a life spent in giving God glory.

We may not be able to go to foreign countries in pursuing God’s intentions for our lives.

But each of us is called to fulfill the whole mission of Christ’s Church in our own individual lives. Our sponsorship, through World Vision of three year old Toiba in Kenya, involvement with CHAP, the 30 Hour Famine, the PPSST Food Drive, the upcoming local mission trip, Friend Day in November, upcoming servanthood evangelism events, and above all, our personal willingness to share Christ with the spiritually disconnected, are all ways in which we can lead the life of purpose that gives God glory that Jesus Christ wants each of us to experience.

We need to encourage one another in living out our Christ-given mission to the whole world. It’s to help us fulfill this single mission that Jesus prays in verse 11: “Holy Father, protect them in Your Name that You have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”

When I come to the end of this life, I want to be able to pray with the same sense of jubilation and fulfillment we see in Jesus in our Gospel lesson.

I want to be able to look back on a life in which I loved God, loved the world, and took my part in making some disciples of the world’s 4.5-billion unreached people.

I want to be able to say, “Mission accomplished.”

How about you?

If it’s your desire to fulfill God’s purposes for your life, ask Christ to live fully in you…and then go wherever He leads you. Amen